Comcast’s Brian Roberts Reaffirms Faith in David Cohen

Brian Roberts (left) and David Cohen. Photos | Comcast

[Update 3:45 p.m.] If there’s speculation about David Cohen’s future at Comcast, it’s not coming from Brian Roberts, the company’s chairman and CEO. He released a statement this afternoon reaffirming his faith in Cohen. 

“There is nobody better than David Cohen,” Roberts said. “He’s incredible at what he does and we are beyond lucky that he helps passionately lead so many areas at Comcast. He is also a huge supporter of Philadelphia and has done so much for the community. I’m extremely proud to have him on our team.”

[Original] We’re still wading through all the post-mortems of the failed Comcast-Time Warner merger, but the New York Post raises a new angle: Does the deal’s demise also signal the end of David Cohen’s time atop Comcast?

After all, the paper notes, Cohen’s contract runs out at the end of the year. This might be the moment:

Cohen has come in for heaps of criticism in the media for professing that he just couldn’t see a scenario where the government would reject his pro-consumer pitch to combine with Time Warner Cable.
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“They just lost a big battle. Does the company need a new general to supervise the Washington political strategy?” asked one source.

Cohen earned some $15 million for his troubles in 2014, according to the proxy, making him the fourth-biggest earner at the company.

Cohen, of course, is also an active member of the Philadelphia community — gaining fame as then-Mayor Ed Rendell‘s right-hand-man during the 1990s, then as a chairman at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll law firm before arriving at Comcast in 2002. He chairs the Penn Board of Trustees and is on the executive committee of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.